Primary School Children Have Their 1st Science Paper Published

A group of British children in primary school have set up a new record by having their school science project accepted for publication in Biology Letters – an internationally recognized peer-reviewed Royal Society journal.

The paper reports new findings in the way that bumblebees perceive colors and patterns, and was written by 8 to 10 year old children from Blackawton School in Devon, who conducted the research themselves.

They found evidence that bees can learn and remember cues based on color and pattern, in a complex space.

There is not enough research on the color and pattern vision of insects ans since the subject is rather poorly known, this study is a huge advance in the field.

Dr Beau Lotto, from the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, was the coordinator and the founder of the project, and he is now developing a ‘living lab’ at London’s Science Museum, with funded from the Wellcome Trust, to motivate the public to participate, to design and to run real science experiments on site.

Like all papers published in Biology Letters, this one has been reviewed by peers and despite the rather unconventional presentation of the paper – it has no references because there is no scientific literature accessible to children this age, it was a real success.

Still, to clear things up, it has been published with a commentary by Laurence T. Maloney of New York University’s Center for Neural Science and Natalie Hempel de Ibarra of Exeter University’s Center for Research in Animal Behavior.

Their commentary has all the necessary references and provides background to the research, and the two authors wrote that “the experiments are modest in scope but cleverly and correctly designed and carried out with proper controls to avoid possible artifacts.

“They lack statistical analysis and any discussion of previous experimental work, but they hold their own among experiments carried out by highly-trained specialists.

“The experimenters have asked a scientific question and answered it well.”

Dr Lotto said that “the publication of a scientific paper entirely conceived and written by schoolchildren shows what’s possible if we celebrate uncertainty.

“Real scientific work is full of uncertainty – that’s why it’s so exciting – but I find that this is what’s lacking in education, where subjects are too often presented as a series of dull factual certainties.

“The publication of this work is an important step in showing what we can achieve if we’re prepared to approach science in a way that’s creative, daring and, above all, fun.”

“This paper represents a world first in high quality scientific publishing and I’m proud that Biology Letters is supporting this highly innovative approach to science education,” said Professor Brian Charlesworth FRS, Editor of Biology Letters.

“This is a unique way of encouraging children's engagement with science by getting a group to write about their work in a publishable format.

“I hope that it will inspire other groups to realize that science is not an exclusive club but something that’s available for everybody.”